Maybe, just maybe, we should regulate the banking industry a little more since it is U.S. Government Backed and they are a little more than reckless knowing that they have a safety net to always fall back on?

The most-obvious conclusion is that we have carried this concept of being undermanned all year. And now we have picked up a couple extra players that aren’t exactly burning up the court, but they do give us some emergency backup.

So isn’t it possible we have brainwashed ourselves into feeling like we are an inferior team this year? We’ve been leaning on this “undermanned” crutch all year and maybe we finally put too much weight on it and snapped the crutch!

That is one idea. Hence, my solution for this is that we do NOT accept any excuses (crutches) moving forward.

Okay… so if that isn’t the biggest issue… let’s start looking at some excuses (reasons) why we are playing so poorly. In this thread, we have played two new reasons:

Team feuding
Pot use

It doesn’t seem like we can totally substantiate either of these reasons. But we are seeing WHY we are losing so many games; lack of hustle! Most of our guys seem to be more interested in watching the game instead of playing it. Just watch tonight. Shots will go up and watch what our players are doing. They are just watching the game, not fighting for rebounding position.

Maybe our guys are just too busy NOT being in the present. I covered that in another thread… not too many people seem to buy into that one. The book I mentioned really describes how performance in our lives is optimized by keeping our consciousness in the now.

Consider how much pressure is on these guys to extend the streak. That pressure only exists when our guys are NOT engaging in the present. If they aren’t in the present, they are in the past or in the future. In the past thought probably goes like, “oh man, our last 13 teams have won our conference and we really have to win it, too!” This is stressful and induces our guys to watch the game more than play it.

Then they think of the future… “oh man, we are going to be the team that blows the streak! We will go down in KU history as the team that blew it! Yikes!” This is stressful and can either help to develop a chip or it can freeze our guys because of the fear. Obviously, it looks like the later!

I’ve been busy trying to apply this book to my life. Trying to live more in the present. It isn’t easy to do because it means retraining the brain and requires killing that constant voice running in my head. It requires a kind of zen approach to removing all the chaos in the mind and focusing on just one thing. So far, I have been able to do it in spurts. Those spurts are excellent! Wish I could have applied it back in my own basketball playing days!

I’ve been trying it a different way this season. I have been interweaving the metaphor of Guadalcanal through intermittent references to The Canal in a succession of posts.

This regular season has so far been the six month campaign on Guadalcanal–trying to get ashore and fight without the necessary man power and with the needed reinforcements of the short handed team that is already ashore and trying to simultaneously hold Henderson Field and fight their way through tall grass and jungle with attrition of personnel. Think General Vandegrift trying to wage the first phase of a Soloman’s campaign with a skeleton crew green Marines and Army that can barely get resupplied because the troops and supplies keep being delayed off shore by the NCAA.

I have carried the metaphor up to the coming visit to Morgantown being this team’s apparently decisive Battle for the Tenaru River that culminated ultimately in hand to hand on a sand bar.

If the team were to prevail in this encounter with Huggins’ mashers, then the rest of the season looks like a Solomon Island Campaign island hopping up the slot to try to cut off Rabaul by taking both Bougaineville and New Britain and part of New Guinea, during the remainder of the front nine of the B12 campaign; then moving on to Tarawa, Guam/Saipan, for the Back Nine of the B12, then into post season Iwo and Okinawa, where the impossible will take a little longer.

Alas, if the team gets massacred on the Monogahela in Morgantown, then it maybe time to look for another metaphor.

@jaybate-1.0 Lots to consider for sure. Recurring themes regarding mil-industrial complex stretching back to WW2, heck, even to WW1. Sophie+ArchDuke Ferdinand getting assassinated was only used as a catalyst to start the Great War, the war to end all wars…oops, but history repeats, but greed is an innate human quality.

This is simply why there cannot be a utopia, but people can waste their lives dreaming, but then your 70-80-90 yrs are up…

I’d like to see Mitch stretch defenses by hitting that trey a little more consistently, Keef style. Speaking of Keef, I’d like to see if Angel could talk to Momma P. Angel was such a parental presence at KU. She was the one that inspired the FOE. Momma P could use a good dose of Angel.